


Bad Habits

by TheArchaeologist



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: But a litte, Character Study, Deviancy (Detroit: Become Human), Deviant Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Examination of Connor, Examination of Deviancy, Father-Son Relationship, Gen, Good Parent Hank Anderson, Machine Connor (Detroit: Become Human), Mostly No Dialogue, Protective Hank Anderson, Reflective Hank Anderson, Swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-14
Updated: 2019-01-14
Packaged: 2019-10-10 05:29:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17419970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheArchaeologist/pseuds/TheArchaeologist
Summary: Hank reflects on deviancy and how it effects Connor and his less than stellar habits.





	Bad Habits

In all honestly, Hank should probably invest in a pair of fucking child reigns.

Failing that, he always has Sumo’s old metal lead, the one Hank had brought when Sumo first came into his life. For whatever reason, Sumo _hated_ the stupid thing, and refused to be walked on it. Leather? Fine. Plastic? No problem. A piece of mouldy string found in the gutter? Perfect. Amazing. 10/10 would use again. But the fancy metal one that clipped onto his collar and was likely to last longer than a few months? You had better be ready to drag 170lbs of stubborn fur and drool through the park.

He probably _should_ use it on Connor, because ‘stubborn’ is his middle name, right along with ‘dumbass’.

It’s not that Connor isn’t smart, not in the slightest. Hank would never cease to be intrigued as the android gradually made his way around a crime scene, taking tiny details everyone else had missed and ruffling some feathers because of it. He had the entirety of the internet’s knowledge lodged inside his brain, giving him a distinct edge of the likes of Hank and Ben and all the other guys who were inching towards retirement age.

It’s not that Connor isn’t smart, it’s that Connor was simply turned on one day like a new phone.

All deviants are a bit like that, wide eyed and bushy tailed, and for all their complexity sometimes they’re pretty dumb on how the world works. Again, if he was to be asked Hank would stress that that didn’t mean they weren’t intelligent beings, but there was a naivety that took a good while to shake.

Strangely, the first few rounds of deviant androids didn’t have it as bad, the ones who had been forced to adapt and change, to go unnoticed and mirror human behaviour. Markus never seemed to have a problem, or any other of the Jericho lot.

It was the newer ones, the ones who were just instructed to ‘wake up’ and found themselves in a world where a revolution on their behalf had already been won. The ones who weren’t forced to hide who and what they were.

Hank had it explained to him once that androids knew they could pull a piece of string, but not push. As they changed over into deviancy, that logic lingered in what were basically fully-grown two-year olds. 

It was like how Cole took several attempts to learn that only blocks that mirrored the shape of the hole would fit through, deviants had to unlock and understand the different complications of the world, their place in it, and all kinds of other things that were outside their sphere of understanding.

But the thing about Connor is, is that he isn’t like all the other androids. What they had to overcome was, for the most part, to stop lifting boxes, or stop serving customers. They broke through their wall, deviated, and then had minimal to overcome in order to explore the wider world.

Connor is very, very different in that regard. 

Connor is programmed to be a machine that fixates on his task and does everything he can to complete it. He was, by his very design, determined, eager, a borderline workaholic. Failure was something that would eat at him for _weeks_ , and Connor would go long periods analysing and then re-analysing evidence looking for some clue or pattern that might be the answer they need.

And all this is fine for an emotionless object. Sure, why not? It takes some of the pressure off Hank in any case.

But for a deviant, this manifests itself into an amalgamation of bad habits and learnt behaviour that breeds a toxic mix of contingent self-esteem issues and bad impulse control. It was like trying to tame a particularly wild police dog; all it takes was a whiff of a scent and they’re barrelling through anything and everything in their path to catch it.

_That_ is very hard to shake away. It’s not like customer service, you can’t switch off at the end of the day and be done with it. If you programme something to be driven to the upmost degree, then something like deviancy isn’t going to fully erase that.

Somewhere within him Hank is thankful that he was once a father to a toddler, because holy shit does it pay to be able to read another person and think, ‘shit, they’re about to run off’. It’s enough to give him the two second notice before Connor does his stupid bloodhound trick and goes vaulting out the door, or off the roof, or _into the fucking river._

And it’s not that Connor doesn’t understand _why_ it is dangerous for him to do those things. He knows better than anyone that CyberLife has no more empty bodies for him to slip into, that the chances of death being permanent are up in the ninety percentages. Connor always seems to apologetic too, when Hank catches up and finds their guy in cuffs on the floor and a dishevelled android kneeling over them. He _knows_ that if he jumps the gap there’s the probability he could fall or running into traffic could see him hit.

But, and there is always, _always_ a fucking but, he tries to excuse it too.

And that’s how Hank knows that he doesn’t get it. 

He says he does, and Hank has no trouble knowing that Connor understands the theory behind it, but he simply doesn’t get it. Any thoughts of self-preservation go right over his head no matter how many times Hank might shout at him, or lock him in the car, or threaten to leave him at home for the day. Instead, Connor will point out how long they’ve been working on the case, how critical it is to catch the bastard, and what probability they have of arresting them if they get away again.

“I calculated only a thirty-eight percent chance of me freezing.” Connor explains as Hank desperately tries to warm him after leaping into a lake in fucking January. “But the likelihood of us failing to make an arrest rose to eight-six if we didn’t move now.” 

Maybe it’s leftover data still lodged in his brain, still floating around and blocking all the common sense trying to claw through. 

Maybe it’s down to Connor’s terrible social awkwardness which leaves him with very little else to occupy his time. 

Maybe it’s the fact that Connor was specifically created to not see death as an issue. It clearly wasn’t something anyone thought to be a setback when he was first turned online. Fuck, CyberLife had practically _expected_ Connor to die, building in software that allowed him to save his memory, and creating body backup after body backup to upload him to each time.

Whatever the fuck it is, Hank knows from experience that if he doesn’t reign in this rookie soon the kid’s luck will eventually run out, and then they will both be in trouble.

**Author's Note:**

> Nice, opened ended finish for your guys to ponder!


End file.
